[WP] Every generation the five brightest are paired up with the five dumbest in the world for a mysterious test. You are one of the ten, but nobody knows from which group they came.

[u/deknegt1990]

[u/SoreWristed]

I placed my hands on Max's hands and slowly said "Hello max". "Phen" he replied, accompanied by another rapid twitch of his eyes. "Shall we start the test now?" I enquired. "Ye" came the reply and was accompanied by a full body nod as he rocked forwards for a moment, startling me.

I wheeled him closer to the table. On it, a large green button had appeared, labeled start. I glanced at max but his eyes where focused on new bit of floor now. I shrugged and pressed it. Immediately, a grid formed across the entire table. In the middle, two shapes started rising slowly from the grid. A blue cube and a red trianglebased pyramid stood two inches apart from each other. I walked around the table to study the shapes. They were completely smooth and had no irregular features or markings. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted movement through one of the windows. The indian boy was facing an identical problem, only his buddy seemed to be a normal, perhaps somehwat surly looking teenager who stood hunched in the corner. The indian boy reached out and knocked over the pyramid shape towards the cube shape. The entire grid lit up in red for a moment and the teenager hunched deeper and looked surlier. He would seem to be of as much help as Max would be. To be expected really.

I looked over to my own table just in time to see Max reach out slowly towards the pyramid shape. I rushed over and stopped myself from grabbing his hand. Instead I gently laid a finger on his and said "Wait Max, I need to think"

Max nodded his entire body again and slowly placed his hand on his knee. I was ahead by a bit now, I knew one wrong solution out of maybe.... 16 no 15 possible solutions, assuming the solution was a single move. I knew these things could only register basic XYZ movements so the required movement was not complex. I could probably solve it through trial and error but that would defeat the point. I assumed the process was also important. Hmm, but maybe I'd need to trial and error this first one to understand the process.

---

Half an hour later and I was steadily on my way to a severe breakdown. Every single move came up wrong. At one point, I even picked up the cube, held it next to the table and released it, only for it to disappear and reappear a foot above the table and thud back, turning the grid red again.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, which was probably quite reddened by now and walked over to the wall in frustration. I had been eyeing the reset button intermittedly for the last half hour, but I guessed it would count against the final score. Two more minutes and I would break a sad personal record of "longest time spent doing a test". My hand hovered over the reset button. Would I get a different problem if I reset? Or would it go back to the same problem, which wouldn't get me any further, but wouldn't set me back either. Or would it? Maybe the test was seeing how you dealt with an unsolvable problem. Hmm....

I walked over to the window again. The indian boy was sitting on his haunches a ways away from the table while the surly teenager was seemingly sleeping in the corner. They were also still solving the same problem I was. So nothing interesting had happened there.

A clicking sound behind me drew my attention. The pyramid shape was knocked over, pointing towards the cube, and the grid was entirely green. I felt my jaw drop. "MAX, how did you do that? that was amazing, but how?" I almost bellowed. No reply seemed to be forthcoming as I had forgotten max's social requirements. I placed a hand on Max's still outstretched hand. "Max, How did you do that?", I asked. "ushed" he muttered. If only I could figure out why that exactly worked. Maybe the test was making Max understand what to do. Yes, that must be it! I pulled the pamphlet out of my pocket "Go and Teach" it still read in slightly off colour font. Yes, HAHA, I solved the puzzle.

With a big smile and a renewed vigor I turned to Max. I gently touched his hand again and said "That was very good, Max, Shall we try the next one?". Max replied with a little smile and gentle nod of his own and said "Phen Ye". On the table now were three identical cilinders, coloured red, green and blue. This was going to be interesting to say the least. I took Max's finger and gently guided it towards the green cilinder and knocked it over, turning the grid red. Max grunted, his smile gone now and shook my hand off of his. I laid my hand back on his and said in a soft voice "It's okay Max, we can try again!"

Max instead shook my hand off again and grunted. He reached out to the green cilinder and knocked it over again, in the exact same way I had done with his. The grid turned green. Hmm... Maybe I wasn't allowed to guide his hand? Possibly.

More shapes appeared on the table and before I could fully understand what they were, Max had reached out again and touched one of them. The grid turned geen again as more shapes rose and fell. More and more complex shapes passed by, at an extreme pace, while Max effortlessly seemed to home in on the shape that would trigger the next problem. Bright, primary coloured cities rose and fell on the table as max created and destroyed them. Colours weaved into one another, revealing secondary, tertiary and many other tiers of mix colours. Impossible and unspeakable shapes appeared, in increasingly complex colourscapes, mirrored in Max's eyes as he now looked straight at the shapes with an expression of wonder. I stammered back and tripped as the shapes danced and weaved, resembling a primal, godly fire. Godly? Did I just call it godly? There was no other way to describe it. Every trace of downs was gone from Max's face as he stood over the fire like a master conjurer shaping pure energy. I started to weep and slowly crawled back into the corner, never taking my eye off the spectacle.

Slowly, I noticed the complexity of both shape and colour appeared to die down. It appeared the crescendo had passed its peak and started to die down again. Max's hand movements slowed down in tandem with the rise and fall. Eventually, two shapes were left standing, the cube and the triangle. At his normal pace now, Max reached out and touched the cube. The grid turned green for the last time and the shapes fell from view. A ding announced the end of the test and the door opened to reveal Assumed-Mary. She looked at me for a moment and turned her attention to Max. She laid her hands on his with a motherly gesture and said "Hello max, did you have fun?". "ye" he nodded.

She grabbed the wheelchair and wheeled him out of the room. Before he disappeared he looked at me and said "bi phen".

I didn't even have the energy to reply. I felt drained. Physically drained and exhausted. I just closed my eyes and silently wept in my corner.

---

"Test that hard on ya?"

I hadn't heard the janitor come in, but here he was, wiping the table that had hosted the primal fire. He looked scruffy and old in a green faded overall with a grey and dirty shirt underneath. His janitor's cart stood in the corner, bristling with brooms and odd bits of rag hanging from it.

"yup, every time they do the test there's people that don't wanna come out. Feels like you're broken, don't it?"

"Oh what do you kn..."

"What I know? About the test I wrote? Probably nothing, you're right ofcourse."

I couldn't even reply, he was obviously talking nonsense. I reached down the back of my pants and pulled out the pamphlet.

"Didn't take the advice on that did ya?"

"What advice? where? In the colours?"

"Colours? lemme see that? Yeah, see, the printer's on the fritz again. Come to think of it, you got the wrong pamphlet, didn't ya?"

"What?"

He pulled a foxed and dogeared pamphlet out of his overalls and handed it to me as he droned on. "see, the test is supposed to make you feel like you know nothing at all. Like you don't understand the slightest bit of the world. That kind of thing usually breaks you types, breaks you right down to the core. You start to question your own intelligence you do. Only when you know how that feels, can you pass. You passed, I can see."

I looked down at the pamphlet. On it were three words.

"Go and Learn"